Which pasta shape goes with which sauce?

Shape pairing looks like tradition and is mostly physics. A chunky ragù slides off spaghetti and lodges in rigatoni; a delicate oil sauce coats thin strands and disappears inside a tube.

What you'll need

• Pasta (optional)
• A sauce in mind (optional)

Step by step

1. Match long thin shapes to smooth clinging sauces.Spaghetti, linguine and tagliatelle with oil, garlic, cream or a smooth tomato sauce. The sauce coats the strands rather than needing to be caught.
2. Match ridged and hollow shapes to chunky sauces.Rigatoni, penne rigate, fusilli with meat and vegetable sauces. The ridges and hollows trap the pieces rather than letting them fall to the bottom.
3. Match wide flat shapes to rich slow-cooked sauces.Pappardelle and tagliatelle with ragù. The surface area carries a heavy sauce that would overwhelm thinner pasta.
4. Use small shapes in soup.Ditalini, orzo, stelline. They are sized to fit on a spoon with the liquid, which is the entire consideration.
5. Choose bronze-die pasta where texture matters.It has a rougher surface that sauce grips noticeably better than the smooth surface of Teflon-extruded pasta. It usually says so on the packet.
6. Cook to just under the packet time.It finishes in the sauce. Pasta cooked fully in water and then heated in sauce is overdone by the time it reaches the plate.
7. Finish the pasta in the sauce with a little cooking water.One or two minutes in the pan. The starchy water emulsifies the sauce and makes it cling, which is what distinguishes sauced pasta from pasta with sauce on it.
8. Reserve cooking water before draining, always.A mug of it. It is the single most useful thing in pasta cooking and it is the easiest thing to forget.

Tips

• Fresh egg pasta suits butter and cream sauces; dried durum wheat pasta suits oil and tomato. They are different products rather than one being better.
• Do not break long pasta to fit the pan. Put one end in, wait twenty seconds for it to soften, and push the rest under.
• The quantity of sauce should coat rather than swamp. Italian portions use far less sauce than most people expect, and it works better.

Common mistakes

• Serving a chunky meat sauce with spaghetti — The pieces slide off and collect at the bottom of the bowl. Ridged or hollow shapes catch them.
• Draining pasta without saving the water — The starchy water is what emulsifies a sauce and makes it cling. Without it, sauce sits separately from the pasta.
• Cooking pasta fully then adding it to hot sauce — It continues cooking and arrives overdone. Pull it a minute or two early and finish it in the pan.

Questions people ask